The Feeling of the Breeze
by Momo-Oba-Chan
Summary: As they travel together, with the birth of their child fast approaching, Sasuke and Sakura have their own personal inadequacies exposed in the face of potential tragedy. Will their love ever redeem them?
1. Prologoue: The Sound of the Breeze

Uhhhhhh…. I don't know what to say, guys. This is my first ever fan fiction. It did NOT go where I intended it to, but you know. I'm nothing if not a sucker for gentle Sasuke. Also I loves me some Sasusaku travel times! Ya feel me? I'm thinking of writing more chapters, but if you think I should not, just send me a message and say, "No, Momo. Please stop that nonsense." I'll still write them anyways, but I do like hearing opinions, and protestations, and whatnot. Okay! I love you all!

PROLOGUE: THE SOUND OF THE BREEZE

A dog was barking somewhere in the distance. There was a cicada humming just outside the window. The wall clock across the room, which read 2:26 in the morning, ticked away each passing second. A one-armed man and his 36-week-pregnant wife lay together in their futon. Unlike some of the previous inns they had stayed at, tonight's inn was far from silent. In addition to that insufferable clock, there was the occasional sound of footsteps tip-toeing past their door on their way to take a late-night dip in the hot springs. Sasuke lay on his left side trying to ignore it all. The noises were not what had woken him up in the first place though.

He had woken up to Sakura shifting on her back. She was uncomfortable and in pain. She released a strained sigh, and he knew. Her back had been hurting her lately. More specifically, her sciatic nerve. Despite her immense physical strength, he supposed it was probably difficult for someone with such a naturally slender build to constantly have the weight of another little person pressing and kicking against her lower abdomen. This was only worsened with all of the walking and moving around they had been doing.

He watched as she struggled to turn herself away from him with her teeth clenched and her eyes squeezed shut in agony. The moonlight streaming through the window illuminated a tear on her cheek as she moved. Sasuke couldn't simply observe any longer.

When she had stilled with her back facing her husband, Sasuke slowly raised his hand and pressed it gingerly to the small of her back. She must have thought he was asleep, because she jumped ever so slightly at the surprise contact. His hand simply rested against her ache. Occasionally, he would move his thumb back and forth in a soothing motion. The pain did not appear to dissipate, but he could feel her tenseness slowly ease away. His hand felt warm and it had begun to tremble a little bit against her. He heard her begin to focus on breathing in time with the stroke of his thumb. _Stroke. Inhale. Stroke. Exhale._ For a long time that was the sound that drowned out all of the others—the sound of breathing, the sound of life. Out of the darkness, a quivering sob broke the rhythm and Sasuke's hand retreated because he suddenly felt that his touch was not enough.

"Sakura, please. Tell me how to help you," he whispered desperately. She moved to dry her face before she turned her head slightly in his direction.

"Sasuke-Kun," her voice was strained as the moon cast a shadow over her exhausted smile. "Just knowing that you're thinking of me is enough. I'm fine, really. It's just pregnancy hormones and all of that."

He knew she was lying. She was not fine in the least. Sakura was always one who believed that she had to push down her pain in order to avoid being what she perceived to be a burden on the ones she cared about. He knew how tenderly she loved and waited for the child that was growing inside of her, but now that she was so far into her pregnancy, they were no longer able to move around as quickly or as nimbly as before. He could feel her ever mounting frustration at the physical limitations. As if she thought she was holding the man she loved back. She didn't know and he couldn't say it out loud, that she was truly just the opposite. She wasn't his burden. She was the summer breeze behind his spirit, propelling him, guiding him ever forward. She moved him and motivated him in ways he never believed another human being capable. Sasuke, of course was never a man of words, especially flowery words such as those. No matter how strongly he felt them, he would never be able to say such things out loud. He preferred to speak through action, but this time he was at a loss. Nothing he could do, no touch, no embrace, no kiss, could ever convey how deeply he relied on her love, her consistency, her patience. Her. How deeply he relied on her. It was maddening how he could never seem to get past his own deficiencies and just express to her what he wished.

At her denial, he wanted to push the subject, but he knew that any further conversation would only serve to delay sleep even more for her. Instead he wrapped his arm around her and drew her back against him. Ghosting his lips over her hair, he breathed, "Rest." Finally she settled into him and it wasn't long before her breathing steadied once again and she nodded off. It wasn't a peaceful sleep, Sasuke noticed, but it was something.

In the darkness, he pondered their itinerary. In the morning they would continue on their way. Their ultimate destination was Karin's hideout. A place where Sakura would be safe and comfortable until the baby is born.

For now though, with thoughts only of his warm summer breeze, the one-armed man soon followed her into sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED?

Will Sasuke learn to talk about his feelings? Will Sakura learn her importance to Sasuke? Find out next time on "I Just Ruined My two Favorite Characters Because I don't Know What the Cheese I'm Doing!"


	2. Chapter 1

Woo buddy! Once again this did NOT go where I was expecting! And definitely it was a lot longer than I was anticipating. I was thinking this would all be resolved in this installment, but things happened and ideas evolved. So basically, The Sound of the Breeze will be the prologue to The Feeling of the Breeze. Sound good? It does to me! Feel free to KINDLY critique and comment, yeah? :D Okay! I love you!

THE FEELING OF THE BREEZE

CHAPTER 1

The sun had long descended out of sight and the moon was playing coy behind the trees, but they were at last so close. Karin's hideout stood only a few kilometers away in the blackness of the forest ahead. And with the hideout came rest and proper care for Sakura, as well as a safe place for their child to be born. They needed this haven. Sasuke wasn't sure how many more nights Sakura could handle sleeping on piled up blankets on the cold forest floor or in the worn-out futons of the various inns that they found along the way. Sasuke wasn't sure how many more nights he could handle watching her forgo sleep only to spend the nighttime hours clutching at her back and shifting her body constantly in pain. How helpless he felt sometimes.

With his arm around her waist, supporting her, they traipsed slowly and cautiously on. "Almost there. How's the pain?" Before she could answer, they stopped abruptly. "Wait. Do you feel that?"

"Yeah," his wife breathed. "Eleven chakra signatures. None of them benign either." Before they could speak any further, they realized that they too had been spotted. The eleven figures, descended with insidious intent from the shadows of the surrounding trees.

If Sasuke had to guess, he would say that they must have been hired thieves keeping an eye on the hideout, just waiting to ransack it. Sasuke's years of traveling had taught him that such a thing wasn't uncommon. In the more underground circles of the hidden villages, there were so-called "men of science" who would pay a fortune to anyone willing just to get their corrupt hands on the infamous Orochimaru's research. Their goal was usually to use the research in their own fowl ways in order to turn a profit.

On closer inspection though, the ninja before them seemed to be more than just some hired thugs. They were dressed entirely in black with long beak-like masks hiding their true faces. They were each of them uniformly short but with wiry limbs, denoting an underlying litheness that could prove tricky if not taken into account. They had already begun to recoil, like snakes ready to strike. That suited Sasuke just fine, because he was more than ready to strike right back. There was no choice but to fight. Even if they made a run for if, there's no way the ninja would just let them go. The trouble now was figuring out if it would be safer to send Sakura ahead or keep her close. His mind was soon made up. As he readied his sharingan, he felt his wife next to him accumulating chakra in her right hand.

"Don't," he said resting his own hand on her arm.

"Sasuke-Kun, I'm not just going to let you fight these guys on your own!"

"You need to think of the baby right now. Using too much chakra could be detrimental at this point. You should know that better than I do. Make for the hideout. I'll hold them here and join you shortly. Go now!"

"Fine. But as soon as I'm in I'll send Karin out after you. Be safe until then." Sakura swerved to the left as quickly as her tired body could, in order to go around the hoard. When a portion of the group sprung towards her, Sasuke was there to meet them with his sword. The ninja stopped short and jumped back. A quick glance in Sakura's direction assured him that she had successfully slipped out of sight and into a darker canopy of the forest.

Sasuke was ready to call forth Amaterasu when the whole group before him, positioned in a half-circle formation, suddenly shifted 180 degrees in unison. He was right, they were quick on their feet, but it was nothing the Mangekyou couldn't pick up. Assured, Sasuke pivoted to face them, but when he stopped, his spine immediately chilled.

 _No, Sakura._

Only ten of the eleven stood before him. One must have slipped away after his wife as they were all moving and Sasuke hadn't even picked up on it.

He had no time to berate his foolishness, because it was his turn to jump back as the ten all leaped forward at once. Amaterasu caught hold of two of the group and the rest scattered into the trees while their comrades burned to ash. Sasuke turned and sprinted frantically towards the very darkness of the forest that seemed to have swallowed up Sakura only a minute ago. As he approached, he caught sight of Sakura just in time to see her bloodied and being hurled belly-first into a tree by the eleventh ninja. "NO!" Sasuke bellowed as he sent his sword flying through the side of the attacker's neck.

By the time he had finally reached her. Sakura had managed to prop herself up against the very tree that she had been thrown into. She was holding her stomach tears and blood mingling into a stream down her face. She seemed to be in shock until she noticed her husband fast approaching. Her face hardened and determination filled her still tearing eyes.

"Sakura!" Sasuke breathed kneeling next to her and running his hands over her body. He needed to feel, physically f _eel_ that his wife was still alive and warm before the chill that had begun to overtake in his desperate heart could start to thaw.

"S-Sasuke-Kun." Despite her apparent resolve to be strong, Sakura's voice was still quaking as she struggled to catch her breath and at the same time hide her panic. "The hideout. We need… to get the baby to… the hideout… My stomach… it…"

"Hn!" Sasuke quickly looked her over with his sharingan. Once he saw that, aside from the cuts on her face, she herself seemed to have avoided any serious injury, a fresh wave of relief washed over him, but only for a second. Remembering his child, he draped Sakura's arm over his shoulder and held her by the waist once more. As they moved at an urgent pace, Sasuke began to allow dread to overtake him. He had failed Sakura. She was still slightly shaking, but her eyes were trained ahead, straining to see their destination in the clearing. Neither of them said a word as they glided deeper into what, now more than ever, seemed to be the uncertain.

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Chapter 2

THE FEELING OF THE BREEZE

CHAPTER 2

So many wires. Impossibly thin wires. So scrawny that even a child could easily snap them. They were weaving in and out of that new, tiny body, somehow keeping her alive; precariously holding her to this world. The blue one was for oxygen, the yellow one to monitor her heartbeat, the red one was circulating and rerouting blood throughout her system. There was a hollow tube stemming into her mouth and down her throat, feeding her. Their child, their precious baby had only been here a few hours, but she was already having to fight so hard just to stay.

Sasuke suddenly wished that he hadn't given the monster who did this such an easy death. He briefly remembered the sword that he forgot to dislodge from the corpse, but he just as quickly dismissed it. What good did it do them anyways? There was no sword, no jutsu, no kekkei genkai that could undo the damage that had already been dealt. The only thing that could was time and these confounding wires, neither of which were a guarantee.

Sakura sat in a chair on the other side of the sterile, transparent pod that cocooned their child. After the emergency C-section, Karin had Sakura feed off of her chakra, healing the incision enough to allow her some, albeit limited, mobility.

Sakura had refused to meet her husband's eye this entire time. He knew she was blaming herself, but he didn't know how to reassure her, especially when he himself felt so hopeless. He would never give her generic promises. _It's okay._ _We'll get through this together. Our love will be enough._ They held no weight. Even worse, what if they turned out to be lies? What if it really was not okay? What if their love was not enough to carry them through this? What would become of them then?

The gravity of the situation seemed to be baring down on both of them, crushing them harder and harder until their souls seemed to have been pressed into a dry, lifeless dust.

"What now," Sakura rasped after what seemed like a millennia of silence. Her eyes were diligently fixed on the baby.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what will you do now? You shouldn't stay here, Sasuke-Kun. Not when you're still looking for answers, right? And there's still so much traveling you want to do. Stay a few days and see if there are any improvements, but we could be here a while." She tried to sound casual, unaffected. She even flashed her trademark smirk. The one, Sasuke learned, she likes to give when she wants you to believe that she isn't actually breaking to pieces, even though it's obvious that she is. She sounded like she was tired, she sounded like she was lying.

"Sakura…" Sasuke moved to cross the gap. He was overwhelmed with the urge to touch her, to run his fingers through her hair, to hold her close against him, to feel some semblance of his warm summer breeze in the wake of such cold words. Sakura only held her hand up, keeping him at bay.

"Don't. Don't touch me right now, Sasuke. I'm fine. We'll be fine without you. The baby and I will go back to the village if… once she's recovered. You should carry on with your mission as soon as you get the chance."

Sasuke could guess her reasons, but all the same, she could have punched him into a crater in the ground and it would have hurt less than her words. Underneath the plastic incubation pod, there was a tangle of wires. Underneath the tangle of wires there was his pudgy, lovely, new little daughter and she could very well be dying right before his eyes. By his daughter's side was the only other person in the world that Sasuke couldn't live without, and she was trying to cast him away.

"Don't lie, Sakura. You don't mean a single word you just said." He could feel his frustration beginning to mount. She still refused to meet his gaze, only looking down, or over, or anywhere but at him. Overwhelmed by a wave of sorrow, he moved towards her again and tried to direct her chin upward. All traces of her forced cheerfulness suddenly dissipated.

"I told you not to touch me, Sasuke. I don't want to be touched right now." Her tone was an icy warning. "Let go. _Now_." She moved her arms to knock Sasuke's hand away, and unthinkingly, he grabbed for her wrist in response. All previous thoughts of wanting to feel her skin were forgotten. Warm or cold? At the moment, he couldn't register _what_ her skin felt like through the heat that now surged beneath his own. "Let me go," She hissed again.

"Sakura, stop. Just look at me! Look me in the eye and repeat what you just said!"

"Right now, I can't Sasuke. I can't look at you!

"God, Sakura! Why are you doing this? Stop acting so helpless!" There it was. That word. _Helpless._ That was the word that hung over, behind, and below the both of them. That was the word that coiled itself around their exhausted limbs and burrowed itself beneath their skin. That was the word that unraveled them both to their very core. They were, both of them, helpless. Once it had left Sasuke's mouth, he wanted to catch it and put it back before Sakura could hear. He let go of her finally as she made to stand abruptly, knocking over the chair in the process.

"Just stay away from me, Sasuke!"

Karin and several lab assistants came hastily in. "What the hell are you two doing?" Her eyes glided past the overturned chair and stopped on the grieving couple before her. She gave a look of understanding "Okay. Sakura, you go back to bed for now. Get some rest. I'll have my assistants keep an eye on the little princess. They'll let you know if anything changes. Sasuke, you come with me to get some air. God! I can't have you two wrecking the lab and disturbing the patient. What's that going to solve? Huh!?"

Sakura already had her back to them as she slowly traipsed towards her bed. From behind, Sasuke could see how she clutched in pain at her now hollow belly. One of the assistants stood close, helping her under the covers. Sasuke wanted to be the one who was near her, to wrap her in blankets and protect her from the hurt that had been dealt her. He wanted to crawl under there with her and tell her how sorry he was for aggravating her just now, for touching her when she had asked him not to. How stupid and clumsy he felt. _Helpless_. He knew that for the time being, any act of reconciliation would only make things worse. Karin was right. Sakura needed rest and Sasuke needed to take in air.

As they passed into the hallway, Sasuke took a final glace back at his wife. She had finally settled in the bed across the room. Her right arm was draped over her eyes and not for the first time, Sasuke saw tears making a sorrowful trail down her cheeks.

"Darling," he heard her mutter to herself. He felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to rush back in to her, but Karin simply shook her head at him as she closed the door between them.

TO BE CONTINUED

Good lard! I really did it this time. I'm going to hell forever and ever! The angst! SO much angst! And poor little sweet baby Sarada! Am I right? T^T I read somewhere once (probably Tumblr, if I'm being honest) that characters are like rocks. If you want to see what they're made of, you need to break them open. That's what's going on here in this story. I'm going to try to break them open so that the end result will be as raw and as human as can possibly be managed.

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I'd like to think that I left some room for hope, so don't despair! *hugs and candy for everyone*

Until next time! \^o^/


	4. Chapter 3

Sasuke spoke not a word as he and Karin marched down the hall at an urgent pace. The only sound was the clicking of her high heels as it reverberated down the narrow passage. Sasuke's mind and heart were back with his fading daughter and his heart-broken wife, but there was business he knew he needed to attend to. His argument with Sakura made him realize that now was the perfect time.

"Karin. Those men in masks. Who were they? They were far too skilled to be mere thugs." At Sasuke's fervent appeal, Karin halted.

"Well, I guess we're far enough away from the room that we can discuss it here. First thing's first though." With that, Karin extracted something from her belt, and for the first time, Sasuke noticed that she had been carrying his sword. "You're going to need this."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. While you two were having your little quarrel, I ran and grabbed this for you. I just figured you wouldn't want it to spend any longer in that sack of rotting flesh than it had to. I will say though, even without the use of her chakra, it looks like Sakura managed to guide an onslaught of kunai into his chest before you even got there."

Sasuke allowed his eyes to drift closed as he flashed a tired smirked. "Of course she did." He almost wanted to laugh. His wife hated standing aside and being protected. If it was within her power to fight back, any fool would know that she would find a way. She was amazingly strong and overwhelmingly brave like that. The memory of her agonizingly draped on the bed just down the hall brought Sasuke back to the topic at hand. "Anyways. Who were those men, Karin?"

"The Black Cranes."

"Mercenaries?" The Black Cranes were an organization that had risen to prominence shortly before the war. They had many sects scattered about the shinobi world, but their headquarters resided in the Land of Waves. They were mercenaries generally hired to get rid of corrupt noblemen that would otherwise go unpunished by the law. Sasuke had heard stories of them in his travels, but had no idea that they would reek this much havoc in his life.

"What were they doing here?"

"Probably looking to nab Orochimaru-Sama's research."

"Isn't that a little too small-scale for them?"

"If this had been a few years ago, maybe. But there's been a rumor going around that these times of relative peace have put them into a financial bind and they're now accepting whatever job is dropped in their laps. Their leader, Kurogata, probably figures there's no longer any room to be picky."

"Is that so?" His eyes narrowed and his tone carried a deadly chill to it now. All traces of his former weariness seemed to be tucked away for the moment. "And where can I… get in touch with this Kurogata?"

"Sasuke! You can't be serious right now! I know Sakura said that you could go on with your life for the time being, but what if you get yourself killed? Despite what she says, you should stay here with your wife and your sick kid! I'm disappointed that I even have to tell you that!"

"It's exactly because of my wife and child that I need to exterminate them for good. Sakura will never have peace knowing that those men are still out there."

"It doesn't look to me like that's the problem between you two, Sasuke."

"I know. But this is the only way I know to protect them; by keeping the enemy far away." Sasuke allowed himself to glance towards the room. Under the surface he was still seething at Sakura's coldness, but there was something else there too, a feeling that far transcended the pain of her rejection. Sasuke couldn't give way to that feeling just then, though, lest he should lose his will to hunt down the Black Cranes. As he fastened his sword to his belt and turned away from the corridor, he thought of Sakura once more and he thought of the child that they had created together, and he silently hoped to God that she had inherited her mother's stubbornness.

"At least let me send for Juugo or Suigetsu so that they can go with you," Karin insisted, keeping pace with Sasuke as he began to move once more. Without missing a beat, he turned a corner.

"No. It's now or not at all. Just tell me where I need to go."

 _To be continued_


End file.
